


Better

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Dean Needs A Hug, Dean Needs Castiel, Dean POV, Dean carrying Castiel, Dean is a mess, Destiel if you squint - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Feels, Gen, Grieving, Grieving Dean Winchester, Grieving Jack Kline, Grieving Sam Winchester, Hunter's Funeral, Jack is a precious cinnamon bun, M/M, Post-Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Sam Needs A Hug, Sam is a pillar of strength, Season/Series 13, So Much Grieving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 07:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: Dean breaks, but not all at once.





	Better

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during and after Episode 13x01: Lost and Found.

**_Before_ **

After they wake up and struggle to their feet, after they realize Jack has left the premises, it becomes about the job, again. Dean holds on to that. There's a kind of soothing clarity in having something to focus on. It helps him stave off the howl building at the base of his chest.

Sam says, "Let me cover Kelly, and then I'll help you with—" He breaks off, chokes on the words before nodding once and heading for the bedroom.

Dean doesn't wait for him to reemerge. Dean goes downstairs, outside. Hope is a cruel, unstoppable thing, he thinks, in that there's no way to completely will it out of yourself. He knows, he _knows_ , he knows that what he's going to find is the same as what he left: one dead angel (one dead best friend, one lost chance, one empty future), one pair of burnt-out wings. And yet there's that fucking scrap of hope way down in the dark.

Pointless, of course.

Cas lies in the sand, silent and motionless. He looks so _old_ , in death, as if all of the weariness that Dean had overlooked or pretended to overlook in life is now making itself undeniably visible. A little under a decade of throwing it in with the Winchesters has aged him more than a few millennia of serving Heaven. Not really surprising. Guardian angel to the Winchesters was a thankless task, right up until the end. Which was this. A blade in the back, a blade through the heart.

 _Fuck, Cas_ , Dean thinks, standing over the body. _You deserved better_.

 _Better than this_ , he thinks.

 _Better than me_ , he thinks, unable to stop himself, and the truth of that threatens to snap him in two.

Cas deserved better than a lot of things, but for right now he deserves better than to lie in the damp earth while Dean and Sam try to chase down the mistake that is Jack Kline, anyway. Dean takes a deep breath through his teeth and bends his knees.

Cas is cool to the touch, about the same temperature as the ground he's lying on, but everything else about his body feels the same as it did in life. His head lolls when Dean slides an arm under the angel's shoulders, and for a moment Dean nearly breaks, then and there, nearly crumples back to his knees in the dirt, nearly gives up, gives up on everything.

But he doesn't, because Cas fucking deserves _better_.

He gets his arm all the way under Cas's shoulders, trying to ignore the way the Cas's head tips back lifelessly, trying to ignore the pale, unmoving line of Cas's exposed throat, and he gets his other arm under Cas's knees, and he grits his teeth and lifts.

He expects it to be a strain, expects it to tear at his shoulders and back and at his bad knee. Is ready to welcome the pain, even. But Cas is unexpectedly light, in his arms, as if the thing that gave him solidity and weighed him down to earth is gone. Which it is, Dean reminds himself, and tries not to think about what _gone_ means, in this case—about Castiel the _angel_ , weapon of Heaven but not destined for it.

Dean straightens and turns toward the house, holding his best friend's corpse in his arms.

Cas still smells like Cas—or maybe Cas always smelled a little like damp earth and smoke and pine trees, anyway, so the difference is hard to spot. Cas's head rests against Dean's shoulder; his arms dangle limply from their sockets; his stupid trench coat is bunched up against Dean's stomach and the hem hangs down against Dean's thighs.

Dean swallows, hard, against the sob that crowds in the back of his throat. _I'm sorry_ , he thinks. _God, Cas, I'm so sorry_. There's no sign of Sam, and he wonders if his brother is standing at the upstairs window, looking down in mute empathy. He doesn't look up to check.

He carries Cas up to the door and over the threshold (and isn't _that_ a fucking sick joke, he thinks) of the house, into the quiet dining room. A little light is coming in through the window. He lowers Cas onto the table as gently as he can, but the transfer still rumples the trench coat. Still bumps Cas's head against the wood. Still leaves one arm hanging off the edge, fingers loose and slightly curled.

Dean swallows again, makes his hands unclench. He straightens Cas's body, lays him out on his back, smoothes the coat. He reaches for the sleeve of the dangling arm to lift it, and by some trick of his traitorous body ends up taking hold of Cas's hand, instead. The fingers are dry and chilly to the touch, unresisting.

Dean puts Cas's arm on the table, and then he stands there for a moment, holding on to Cas's hand, and then he finds himself doubled over, head down, breath pistoning in and out of him in a kind of ragged uncontrollable staccato. He's clutching Cas's hand, and Cas's fingers are limp and _so cold_ , and with his other hand he's gripping the tabletop so hard that his whole arm is trembling, no, his whole body, and he stands there with his forehead lowered nearly to Cas's chest and he thinks that he might shake apart, right there, right in that softly lit dining room.

***

By the time Sam comes outside a few minutes later, Dean's already fetched a sheet and covered Cas's body, and is waiting by the Impala.

Sam opens his mouth, but Dean beats him to it. "Let's go," he says. It's just the job that matters. It's just the job, now.

***

**_After_ **

They stand before the pyre until the flames die down and the smell is mostly of ash. Dean's throat hurts and his eyes are stinging from the smoke but he refuses to look away. His words to Sam echo ceaselessly, like waves against the inside of his head.

 _Gone. They're all gone_.

Sam's voice, beside him—barely more than a whisper, but Dean catches the word _goodbye_ , repeated, and knows Sam is saying his own farewell. Muted, private, the way Sam is with his grief.

Jack Kline has no such restraint. As the flames flicker away to nearly nothing, he clears his throat and says hesitantly, as though testing the words, "Goodbye...goodbye mother. Goodbye, father. Thank you for protecting me."

Dean stiffens, turns his head. "What did you say?" It comes out of him in a hoarse, monotone whisper, all he can muster up at the moment.

"Goodbye to my mother," says Jack serenely. "Kelly Kline." On Sam's face there appears a look of sudden alarm, but Dean ignores that, focusing instead on the nephilim, whose face is lit coppery-orange by the dying fire. The nephilim, who is continuing, "And to my father. Castiel. And thank you, because they protected me, and they loved me, and they made sure I was born."

In a way, it's not even the statement itself that cracks something inside of Dean; it's the naked earnestness on Jack's face, the confidence with which he claims this link, this bond with Cas. The _injustice_ of it all, that Jack should stand there and say those words with such open sincerity, that he should lay them out in the night as if it's the easiest thing in the world to say _Castiel, he loved me and he was mine, and I was his_ —no. No. _No_.

"Castiel is _not_ your father!" Dean whirls on Jack, his fury a blessed warmth in his veins after all that numbness. Jack takes a step back, his features tightening in fear, and Dean takes vicious pleasure in that as he strides forward. "Your father is _Lucifer_ , your father is the goddamn Devil, Cas is _not your father_ , he is _dead_ , he is dead because of—"

"DEAN!" Sam's there, suddenly; Sam is a wall in front of Dean, shutting out the sight of Jack, blocking Dean's way. Sam's voice is the crack of fire and command, rooting Dean to the earth, making him clench his jaw shut against the words— _he's dead because of you, he died protecting you, they're all dead because of you_.

"Jack, go wait in the car," says Sam, and that measure of power must still be ringing out in his voice, that crackling undercurrent which brooks no disobedience, because Dean hears the crunch of Jack's retreating footsteps, hears the click of the Impala door opening. He hears it only; his vision has gone blurry; Sam's face swims, out of focus, as if seen underwater.

 _He's dead, he's all the way dead, because of you._ Dean. _Me_.

"Dean," says Sam again, very close by, and Dean has the sensation of falling. It seems to go on and on until suddenly he's aware of Sam's arms wrapped around him, and Sam's shoulder under his chin, and the damp earth (why is the earth always so damp in this godforsaken piece of land?) soaking through the denim at his knees.

"He's gone," Dean gasps, the words cutting all the way up, "he's gone, Sammy, they're all gone, they're gone—"

"I know," says Sam, and his voice breaks a little, and that breaks Dean, too, because he's supposed to be strong when Sam isn't, and Sam's supposed to be strong when he isn't—they aren't supposed to break at the same time, they _can't_ , there has to be one of them to hold the other up.

But Sam _is_ holding him up, in spite of everything. His goddamn giant of a little brother is holding him in place as Dean shakes and tries to breathe. Sam is murmuring quietly into Dean's hair, just above his ear, the way their mom used to do when Dean was so young he only remembers her voice and not the words she would say, and Sam was so young he shouldn't have remembered at all.

Dean tunes into the words with some trepidation, because if Sam is saying _it's okay_ or _it's alright_ , or _it'll be okay_ or any such variation Dean will lose it, _it_ being whatever he has left to lose, because it _won't_ be alright, it _won't_ be okay, it _won't_ be better, ever.

Sam isn't saying any of those things. "We have to say thank you," Sam is saying, his voice thick, unsteady. "We have to say thank you, and let him go. Let them all go."

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, there on the earth with his brother, the pyre towering beside them. _Thank you_ , he thinks, but the words sound hollow. Cas deserved better than Dean's thanks. Cas deserved better than Dean. _Thank you_ , Dean thinks again, because it's all he can do. _Thank you, Cas, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, you deserved better, you deserved better than_ —

 _This_ , he thinks.

 _Me_ , he thinks.


End file.
